gifted education
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Why I Love Teaching the Hero’s Journey in Gifted Education
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Why Gifted Kids Often Feel Like “A Square Peg Trying to Fit Into a Round Hole”
Gifted children often feel like square pegs trying to fit into round holes because they think, learn, and experience the world differently. This post explores why gifted students may struggle to feel understood in traditional classrooms and how educators can create flexible, challenging, and supportive environments where their unique strengths can shine.
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Designing for Depth: Using Big Ideas to Build Complex, Challenging Curriculum
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Rubber Band Racers in the Gifted Classroom: Engineering, Energy, and a Whole Lot of “Try Again”
TeacherGeek 2.0 Rubber Band Racers turn a simple STEM build into a powerful gifted learning experience. Students explore force, motion, energy transfer, friction, measurement, data collection, and redesign as they build, test, and improve their racers. This hands-on challenge encourages problem-solving, perseverance, and engineering thinking while giving students a fun reason to collect evidence, analyze…
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Our Hometown: Roswell, New Mexico — More Than UFOs
Our Hometown Research Project is a ready-to-use gifted curriculum that turns your local community into a living classroom. Students investigate history, geography, economics, culture, architecture, tourism, and real-world problems while creating meaningful products like maps, graphs, podcasts, Google Earth tours, interviews, and community research projects. Designed for 3rd–5th grade gifted learners, this curriculum builds critical…
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Learning Alongside My Students: Exploring Lopaka in The Global Innovation Lab
In this #smithingifted blog post, I share how I am exploring Lopaka as a creative tool for The Global Innovation Lab. Working with Ivan Guzman and Mikhail Ilan from Lopaka, I am learning how students might use design, coding, sensors, robotics, and small display screens to turn real-world ideas into meaningful prototypes. As we begin…
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Using Google My Maps in the Gifted Classroom: Mapping The Global Innovation Lab
The Global Innovation Lab is growing! 🌎🚀 In this post, I share how Google My Maps is helping us connect classrooms around the world so students can collaborate on real-world challenges like water conservation. If you want your students to think bigger, create meaningful solutions, and learn alongside students from other communities and countries, I…
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Why I Grade Student Assignments in #smithingifted — Even When They Don’t Go on a Report Card
In this #smithingifted blog post, I explain why I grade gifted student assignments even though they do not appear on a traditional report card. My simple 1–4 grading system helps students understand expectations, gives meaningful feedback, creates accountability, and provides clear documentation for progress reports. For gifted teachers, this system makes it easier to track…
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Welcome to #smithingifted: Where Gifted Learners Think Bigger, Create More, and Lead the Way
#smithingifted is a resource space for gifted teachers who want more than basic enrichment. Created by gifted educator Beth Smith, #smithingifted focuses on rigorous, creative, and ready-to-use resources for gifted and high-ability learners, especially in STEM, robotics, coding, design thinking, student choice, and real-world problem solving. From classroom projects to innovation challenges, these resources are…
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FarmBeats for Students: Classroom Ag with micro:bit — Growing Innovation Through the Global Innovation Lab
This blog post explores how FarmBeats for Students: Classroom Ag with micro:bit can support the Global Innovation Lab by connecting coding, agriculture, water conservation, and real-world problem solving. Through micro:bit sensors and hands-on investigations, students can collect data on soil moisture, plant growth, and water use while designing solutions to grow plants more efficiently. This…